Have you ever wanted to take a road trip like Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise? You can now. Gregor Weichbrodt used Google Maps to write directions for On The Road’s famous 7,527-mile drive. Choose your companions wisely, so you don’t get stuck with dysentery in Mexico.
“Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?”
Wells Tower on Mitt “Tin Man” Romney
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned author Wells Tower hit the campaign trail with presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, and his lengthy piece entitled “Desperately Seeking Mitt” is sure to ruffle some red-colored feathers.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Russell, Koch, Crace, Mohr, Binchy, Conklin, Lasdun
New this week: Karen Russell's new collection Vampires in the Lemon Grove; buzzed-about thriller The Dinner by Herman Koch; Harvest by Jim Crace; Fight Song by Joshua Mohr; the final novel of the late Maeve Binchy, A Week in Winter; Tara Conklin's debut The House Girl; and James Lasdun's non-fiction Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Coover; Donoghue; Huneven; Glass; Coupland; Osborne; Waldman; Jamison
New this week: The Brunist Day of Wrath by Robert Coover; Frog Music by Emma Donoghue; Off Course by Michelle Huneven; And the Dark Sacred Night by Julia Glass; Worst. Person. Ever. by Douglas Coupland; The Ballad of a Small Player by Lawrence Osborne; Love & Treasure by Ayelet Waldman; and The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great 2014 Book Preview.
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Extremely High Dive
When Electric Literature tells me that Jonathan Lee has "unleashed a literary bombshell of a novel," I set aside my skepticism of the hyperbolic and give it a look. Lee's High Dive "asks us to look at the plethora of thought and self-indulgence—that beautiful minutia—that flourishes in an unharmed life, and to consider how much generous freedom there is in nonviolence."
Fatal
As titles go, it’s hard to get more straightforward than England and Other Stories, the new collection by Graham Swift. In the Times, Michiko Kakutani provides her verdict, lauding Swift for his ability to paint “vistas as panoramic as those in the stories of Alice Munro.”
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“Linguistic loot”
Recommended Reading: Kate Manning on the “slumgullions” of English.